29 June 2008

Ok, we're in Australia now. Sorry it's taken so long for us to write; we only just found free internet last night. We got to Sydney on Friday morning (thursday evening for you) and now it's Saturday afternoon (Friday late night), so it's been three days, and we're already over the jetlag! Right, and we live in the future. Zang.

Update: we're staying at a hotel/hostel right now; it's nice and clean. We have a private bath, and there's a shared kitchen, and they serve breakfast every morning, but we haven't eaten it yet. Mostly because they expect us to drink Nescafe, when every single tiny cafe in town serves great espresso. Ridiculous. But we can't stay there long because it's still too expensive. We've seen one apartment so far, but it's a definite no. Gross bathroom.

The restaurants we've found are pretty good. Huge portions, though. Next time you hear someone go off about how huge American restaurant portions are, and how they're disgustingly big, and how it's completely distorted the American diet, just tell them this: I ordered a $9 dish of 5 falafel, and they were so big, I could only eat one with some pita bread. For my entire dinner. They eat big here. Texas big.

We spent most of the last two days walking for miles and miles to different parts of the city, trying to find a neighborhood we might like to live in, without much luck. Craig's university is in a really expensive and sleepy part of town, very family-oriented, and we're looking for something a little more lively. We might be on the right track with a neighborhood called Newtown--we found an anarchist collective and the socialist paper sellers. There were a bunch of young people with safety pins making and giving away art for donations on the street. Smells like home...

However, most of the last two days has been pretty depressing. Just walking around a huge city that you know basically nothing about means you inevitably end up in miles of residential wilderness and factory-outlet-warehouse-ville.

So, by last night we were tired, sore, and slowly losing hope; then we looked up and saw it. The soaring breathless Opera House, like pieces of sky fallen to earth. The Harbor Bridge, dignified and glorious. The water, the heartbreaking water. After so many years of landlocked, drought-ridden, screaming, thirsty land, it's amazing to see so much water.

And the hardest part is knowing that it's not something we can share with all of you-- you are our support, our amazing community, without all of you, we never would have made it here.

The title for this blog is temporary; we really want y'all to name it. Please send us your suggestions for a title for this blog and also for our impending podcast. Either send me an email or leave it as a comment on the blog.